1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an electrical appliance for preparing a hot beverage, for storing such a beverage at the appropriate temperature and under sanitary conditions and for conveniently dispensing a portion of the stored beverage on demand.
2. Description of Related Art
Many types and styles of hot beverage makers, especially coffee makers, are known and have been sold for many years. The most common coffee makers include a water reservoir and an electric heater for heating and delivering the water into a filter basket. The filter basket contains ground coffee where the water and the coffee grounds mix. The resulting brewed liquid or beverage flows by gravity into a carafe located below the filter basket.
There are many drawbacks associated with traditional coffee makers. For example, in traditional coffee makers the first few cups are usually consumed soon after brewing, so they have a good taste. However, after a short time, the remaining coffee becomes bitter due to overheating and oxidation of the beverage in the carafe. It is recognized that the optimal brewing time for coffee is 5 minutes. Traditional coffee makers require up to 10 minutes of brewing time for a carafe of coffee, resulting in an over extracted beverage. Often such coffee makers dispense the beverage into glass carafes that are subject to breakage as they are frequently removed from and returned to the coffee maker whenever a cup is being poured.
More recently single-serve coffee makers have made an appearance in the market place and have overcome the foregoing problems found in traditional coffee makers. A typical single-serve coffee maker maintains a supply of water at a temperature suitable for brewing coffee. A premeasured amount of coffee is placed in a brew chamber. The brew chamber is sealed during the brewing process, so a water pump can deliver heated water into the brew chamber to mix with the coffee. The brewed liquid then flows into a properly positioned cup.
While single-serve coffee makers overcome many drawbacks of the traditional coffee makers, they also have a number of drawbacks. If a number of people want to be served coffee at the same time from the same single-serve coffee maker, each person has to wait for their coffee while a fresh portion of ground coffee is added and water is reheated in that coffee maker. Normally, such single-serve coffee makers use coffee prepackaged in pods or capsules. Such pods and capsules are more expensive than ground coffee.
Now another concept in coffee makers, known as “brew stations,” has been introduced to overcome single serve coffee brewer drawbacks. In a brew station a coffee brewer brews a quantity of coffee (e.g. a “pot”). Rather than dispensing the entire quantity of brewed beverage into a carafe or the like, the beverage is retained in an internal container with a spigot. The user can dispense a portion of a cup, a cup or many cups consecutively without having to brew each cup separately. U.S. Pat. No. 6,351,475 (2002) to Okamura; and U.S. Pat. No. 7,461,586 (2008) to Gorman et al. describe such a coffee brewers.
Brew stations use the water heating and delivery systems such as those used in the traditional coffee brewer. Consequently, drawbacks of traditional coffee makers are present in these brew stations; that is, the user has a long interval from the beginning of the brewing cycle and the end of the brewing interval cycle. Beverage quality suffers due to the same extended brew time of traditional coffee makers. These brew stations have a spigot for dispensing the beverage that must be located at the bottom of the brewed liquid container, adding significantly to the height of the appliance. The spigot also is difficult to clean and may harbor bacteria and other health hazards.
What is needed is a coffee maker that allows brewing of a multiple-cup quantity of coffee, that stores the brewed liquid in the appliance, that enables the coffee to be dispensed by the user a cup at a time on demand, and that maintains beverage quality.